Curtailing Liberty Provokes Terrorism

There is no trade-off between freedom and security

How should liberal democracies respond to terrorist attacks like the horrific series of murders on Friday in Paris? By re-emphasizing their liberal values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion suggest a couple of recent studies. In a recent article in Conflict Management and Peace Science, State University of New York at Brockport political scientists Nilay Saiya and Anthony Scime using the Government Regulation of Religion Index analyze terrorism incidents in 174 countries found in the Global Terrorism Database between 2001 and 2009. In 2009, the Pew Research Center issued a report that found that 70 percent of the world's population lives in countries that impose high or very high restrictions on the practice of religion.

The two researchers conclude:

The question of the relationship between religious liberty and religious terrorism carries significant policy ramifications: is fighting terrorism best accomplished through religious restrictions or religious freedom? This article has made a simple but important claim: the denial of religious freedom increases the likelihood of violent religious forms of political engagement; paradoxically, the best way to combat religious terrorism is not by restricting religious practices but rather by safeguarding their legitimate manifestations. Regimes that repress religion invite the very belligerency they seek to thwart through such restrictions. These ideas are not necessarily intuitive, but neither are they new. Similar claims were made by prominent intellectuals like John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, James Madison, David Hume and Roger Williams hundreds of years ago.

New York University political scientist Tiberiu Dragu has just published an article on "The Moral Hazard of Terrorism Prevention." His analysis uses game theory to ask if restricting freedom of expression will more likely prevent or provoke terrorist acts. From the abstract:

Since 9/11, democratic governments have responded to terrorist attacks with antiterrorism measures curtailing freedom of expression and other fundamental rights and liberties, all in the name of terrorism prevention. How does a policy of reacting to terrorist attacks with restrictions on free speech protections aect the likelihood of terrorism?…The paper shows that in a world in which democratic governments respond to major terrorist attacks with restrictions on freedom of expression and other rights and liberties, such policies have a moral hazard effect, which can make a terrorist attack more likely. The analysis suggests that a commitment to respecting fundamental rights and liberties in times of duress can be security-beneficial: if liberal societies were to remain faithful to their fundamental values in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, such a strategy possibly decreases the probability of a terrorist attack.

These studies suggest that giving up our freedoms in response to terrorist attacks will more likely make us less, not more, secure. As Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." If these two studies are right there is no such tradeoff: not only won't people deserve either; they will, in fact, get neither.

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Pretty common knowledge that France has far fewer protections of civil liberties than the U.S., so that kind of proposed “solution” shouldn’t go very far. But they did it after 9/11 in a country that laughed off the previous administration’s attempts to restrict civil liberties, so who knows?

1. Are the perps of this and previous ISIS-related attacks in Europe mostly homegrown

Yes.

2. Why are large scale ISIS-related attacks common in Europe but rare (and limited in scope) in the US

I assume you mean Islamist rather than ISIS, because far as I can tell there were two (maybe three) ISIS-related-attacks so far in Europe. And I think there are only three attacks so far with bigger body count than Ft Hood (Madrid 2003, London 2005, Paris II 2015). And the answer is a) Europe took in whoever came over, US has high entry requirements b) Europe has a longer history of Muslim immigration c) Europe has colonial guilt, preventing them from assimilating the first native-born generation d) European countries have far more Muslims (migrant and home-grown) than US. e) welfare state means migrants who can’t find jobs stay rather than leave f) (and most important) Muslims in Europe use explosives when they commit big swineries. Muslims in US use firearms. Maybe it’s harder to make your suicide bombs due to controls since Oklahoma? No idea.

Muslims in Europe use explosives when they commit big swineries. Muslims in US use firearms. Maybe it’s harder to make your suicide bombs due to controls since Oklahoma?

Bomb making is trivially easy. Why don’t our Muslims do this? Could it be the “a” word that the US does so well and Europe does so poorly?

c) Europe has colonial guilt, preventing them from assimilating the first native-born generation

You get 50% on that one. I don’t know whether it’s colonial guilt which is the cause, but assimilation is very much not a thing in Europe. It’s not limited to the first generation. Where are the banlieus of New York? Why aren’t hordes of young second and third generation immigrants in the US burning cars and creating no-go zones?

Bomb making is trivially easy. Why don’t our Muslims do this? Could it be the “a” word that the US does so well and Europe does so poorly?

What, assimilation means Muslims who do commit swineries in US are so dumb they don’t know how to do easy stuff of bomb making? Assimilation can explain away lower number of attacks (though it’s not as low as I assumed), but not why explosives were not used.

Muslims in Europe use explosives when they commit big swineries. Muslims in US use firearms.

I don’t understand the point of this or what evidence backs it up. How many Islamist attacks has the US suffered for you to draw this conclusion? There was Hasan, and it’s clear why he used guns over explosives. The Tsarnaev brothers did use explosives.

Hassan, but also, Beltway Snipers. El-Al shooter.Chattanooga shooter. Little Rock shooter. Seattle shooter. Then there was Santa Clara stabber couple weeks ago. Few others are in the “iffy” category. But yes, I forgot the Boston bombings. Wasn’t there a failed Times Square bombing too? So yeah, there’s one example – hopefully they don’t do more. And WTC bombing, but that predates 9/11, so doesn’t count.

I think the more meaningful distinction is the lack of suicide bombers. Over there, they tend to walk into places, detonate a device and take themselves out along with the people around them. Over here, we have seen exactly zero suicide attacks since 9/11. Everybody either engages in a shootout (Hasan) or other survivable conflict, or sets a bomb and gets out of there (Tsarnaevs, guy who wanted to blow up Comedy Central after the South Park Mohammad episode). I think this is a matter of culture; there is a level of hopelessness in the Middle East and among some European Muslims that we haven’t achieved (yet).

Europe had the same regulations before the US because of the IRA, ETA, etc.

Yeah, also European regulations didn’t keep these murderous scumbags from getting their hands on (actual) assault rifles and stuff like grenades.

Besides, I’m not sure there really is a trend of one type of murder implement over another for these kinds of attacks between the US and Europe. There were plenty of failed explosive attacks here in the US, and plenty of shooting spree type attacks in the rest of the world.

Maybe it just seems like there is a trend because explosive attacks here have largely failed, while attacks with guns have been endlessly politicized in the media?

2. Because Europe has an unofficial but determined program of ghettoization of immigrants.

In the US, we don’t *force* you to become part of the mainstream – but you’re welcome there if you want. In Europe immigrants are typically deliberately excluded through heavy regulation and high minimum wages.

Trying to force westernism on these people is what led to this mess in the first place.

We never tried to,force western is mom them. We tried to,force democracy on them. There’s a big difference. And when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq 2, we took pains to not flaunt our way of life so as not to sensitivities. When what we should have done is open a liquor store, a porn shop, a Walmart and an electronics shop (but not Best Buy, because that would further enrage people and lead to more terrorism) at every intersection in the cities we took over. That’s the westernism we should have introduced. Instead we just let them vote for extremists of varying stripes instead of installing a Governor-general to run the place and set up discos and pizza places and strip malls.

What about the government lifting the boot after each attack instead? So, for instance, after Charlie Hebdo, France adopts a U.S. framework for free speech. Also, should throw in freedoms that particularly torque the terrorists.

Yeah, and where are all the white guys apologizing for the white cops shooting black kids? Because we all need to apologize for everything that someone who looks or claims to otherwise be like us does, or we’re guilty too!

It doesn’t matter whether curtailing liberty leads to more terrorism or not. Curtailing liberty is quite frankly the only thing the people calling the shots know how to do. It’s something that they can do that is shows the public, quite immediately, that they are “doing something”. They are not capable of any other response, nor would choosing any other response make any sense for them and their careers and power.

So it’s going to be liberty curtailment as a response. As always. Enjoy.

Which doesn’t change the fact that the government doesn’t HAVE to either curtail liberty or give up power. It can use retaliatory force and defend liberty without curtailing it. Your basic premise is flawed.

I dream of a politician who would dare respond to these attacks by dropping millions of leaflets, SD cards, even some satellite radio and TV receivers, basically giving the finger to the control freak idiots in charge. But just as the folks who built one million Liberator single shot pistols didn’t have the guts to carry through and drop them, politicians are far more worried about breaking the myth of needing government and politicians than actually fighting despotic government. All they really want is changing who controls the government levers, not the levers themselves.

The FP-45 was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and quickly mass-produced. It had just 23 largely stamped and turned steel parts that were cheap and easy to manufacture. It fired a .45 caliber pistol cartridge from an unrifled barrel. Due to this limitation, it was intended for short range use, 1?4 yards (0?5 m). Its maximum effective range was only about 25 feet (7.6 m). At longer range, the bullet would begin to tumble and stray off course.

War is politics by other means. Terrorism evolved because it is a nearly perfect form of warfare, where a small, poorly armed group can force political change against a large, heavily armed force. Their only weapon is fear. Oddly, the actual damage they are capable of inflicting is generally very small. They only threaten a very small portion of a population or nation’s infrastructure. They are not a true threat to society, they are only perceived as such.

There is only one way to address terrorism and that is through punitive action. That is to say, it cannot be effectively eliminated with conventional forces. It cannot be prevented. Attempting such only makes more terrorists, gives them credibility and expends tremendous amounts of resources in the process.

Take away their weapon. Don’t be afraid and don’t call for unachievable action to be taken. The only way they can effect change is if you fear them. Odds of being killed by a terrorist is like one in 20,000,000, IIRC.

When attacked, identify, capture, try, and punish/kill those responsible (and only those responsible). Then go about your life as if nothing happened.

In the current situation, declaring war on Muslims, is playing right into their hands. That was the entire purpose for these attacks to begin with. The West declaring a holy war on all Muslims will draw otherwise peaceful Muslims to the ISIS cause.

I’m for blocking further entry by them to the West. Yes, it will outrage the open borders crowd but Islam is openly hostile to the West. Europe is full of examples of how this experiment of integration has failed. We tried war and it failed. Same with diplomacy. This approach means no military action, no dead soldiers, no new laws to erode citizen rights. The Middle East has to resolve this problem as it was birthed in the ME.

Doesn’t matter if they’re all identical or not, where ever you get a large minority of them you start having problems.

Same can be said about crime and minorities right here in the US. There are certain minorities who commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Is your answer to send anyone belonging to those minority to camps?

Or do you punish the guilty and protect the rights of the innocent?

The sole purpose of ISIS attacks in France is to get the French equivalent of Yokels to start yammering for a war on all Muslims, thus driving the currently peaceful Muslims in the region into the arms of ISIS.

The minorities committing crime tend to commit that crime in their own neighborhoods, which doesn’t make it good but does help in containing it. This group is intent on inflicting mayhem on others. And it would be nice if the peaceful Muslims, starting with those in the Middle East, took an active interest in corralling the worst among them. Radical Islam will not end until the rest of Islam does something about it.

there comes a point where the one robs the other of the benefit of the doubt. Yes, it’s a small group. What’s the larger group doing about it? A good many in that group give their tacit approval to the violence. The others may be scared to say anything for fear of reprisal but enough silence begins to sound like approval.

Since when is being a member of the same religion grounds for being accountable for the actions of another? I don’t need, nor am I legally or morally required, to do jack shit about anything someone else does.

I guess you can’t write what you want people to read. “Islam is not compatible with the West” seems pretty blanket to me. Maybe you should try again.

If you base this claim on the great unwashed Muslim masses not condemning the few extremists, maybe you should carry that philosophy over to the west, where the great unwashed Christian masses don’t condemn the few extremists.

Most people simply have enough problems handling daily life without worrying about governments over which they have no control.

I base this claim of the actions of doing things in the name of Islam, with either the implicit or explicit approval of the rest. Europe tried this great experiment and it’s not worked. It has not worked because the newcomers will not integrate to their new surroundings.

Pick a group. But they are all here living together, mostly peacefully. How many Muslim uprisings have we had from the 5-12 million Muslim Americans?

No, if there is ever an all out war between Muslims and the West, it will be because small, insignificant bands of terrorists will manipulate the West into forcing otherwise peaceful people into siding with terrorists.

Europe has been awash in problems connected directly to Muslims. This group, unlike the others you list, is openly hostile to Western culture. Whatever moderate Muslims exist, they are either cowed by the radical strain or implicitly support it.

This group, unlike the others you list, is openly hostile to Western culture.

That’s simply not true. We have 12M here and they are not causing us any problems. The only problems being caused are by those attempting to blame an entire group for the actions of a very small minority within that group.

Timothy McVeigh was a Christian, I didn’t hear anyone claiming that all Christians who didn’t write their congressmen calling for his head, after OKC. implicitly supported him.

Tim McVeigh was one guy who was universally condemned, convicted, and executed in record time. The Islamic version has how many people cheering similar acts? We places like Dearborn MI, with a heavy Muslim presence and some issues.

If you want to come here and assimilate and make a life, have at it. It’s how my parents arrive. But don’t expect to come here and turn it into what you left. The actions of the few, combined with the silence/approval of the many is hard to ignore. If that makes me a bad buy, okay, but I don’t see other groups consistently involved in acts of mayhem.

Reading his wiki, he claimed to be agnostic, that religion was his science and requested a catholic chaplain before he died. So, maybe? His wiki is an uncomfortable read for sure. He’s using the US Constitution the way bin Laden used Koran…

From the perspective of those who have power and want an excuse to expand that power, terrorism is the perfect enemy. The people in power know that it can’t be eliminated by conventional means, and to them that is a good thing. It means they can fight it this way and that way, curtail and eliminate this freedom and that freedom, all the while giving the appearance of “doing something” while greatly expanding their power. They win. The terrorists win. The only people who lose are you and me.

we win by not playing and that means don’t let them in. You avoid war, you take away govt’s incentive to come up with new laws, and you force the Middle East to confront the elephant in its living room.

And when those terrorists are also the people in charge of a government, the one thing they fear most is any kind of loss of public support. They fear the truth about what they are doing, they fear the truth about their supposed enemies, they fear their public learning anything approaching the truth. The most effective way to undermine those terrorist governments is spreading the truth in ways that the regime cannot deny. Broadcast live traffic cameras, airdrop movies and satellite radio/TV receivers which can be tuned to any channel to undermine claims of selectivity, and keep on doing so. It would be far cheaper, less risky, and more effective, and reduce the problem at its source.

It would be especially effective with receivers which let the viewers choose any source they can find, such as neighboring countries, enemy countries, and neutral countries, because it would eliminate all arguments on how the propaganda only shows a subset of enemy life.

Meh. Seems more likely to me that both restrictions on religious freedom and religious violence both stem from a similar root (statist religious tradition and impetus), rather than one being the cause of the other.

But sure, let’s pretend that the Middle East is one law away from becoming model social democrats on matters of religion.

In France it is a two-way process. Yes, it’s shitty that you are less likely to get a job if your name is Mohammed. But you are third generation – why not call yourself Michel? Besides, France has other minorities, including 300,000 Vietnamese, and they aren’t as big a problem assimilating.

Hilariously, I’m rereading Verdun 1916: Price of Glory, and it’s on the anti-Catholic mania that hit France at the beginning of last century. To the point that being Catholic was enough to stop people from getting promoted in the military. Like the efforts of this happy fellow:

under his guidance France took the first definite steps toward the separation of church and state. By 1904, through his efforts, nearly 10,000 religious schools had been closed and thousands of priests and nuns left France rather than be persecuted.[8]

I’ll also add that first generation of Arab immigrants to France were not very religious, and were in fact French loyalists. It’s a bit pat, but maybe blame is to go to Saudis after all – this generation of Arabs is at least notionally more Islamic than previous ones were. And in a very nasty, supremacist way – yes, I get to fuck women, drink booze and take drugs, but if I catch you without a headscarf it’s beating time (if you’re one of mine) or raping time (if you’re not).

No, there are Muslims out there with non-Arabic names. Whole countries full of them. Besides, like Chinese here, you could be Mohammed on Friday in the mosque, and Michel when you apply for a job. (OK, Chinese are rarely called Mohammed but you know what I mean). France has set a rule a hundred plus years ago. Everyone is a Frenchman (as in, a citizen of France). That’s why they have no clue how many Muslims or Arabs live there – census does not collect such information since 1872. The official government policy is assimilation, and has worked with other minorities (Vietnamese, Poles, Jews – shit, Sarkozy is Hungarian by origin). Their problems are different from those of Germany, Sweden or UK – each country has its own distinct approach to migration.

No, we shouldn’t pretend that the ME is just a few steps away from becoming a liberal society. But things moving in that direction is the only way forward if any of this shit is going to improve. A lot of people have been awfully excited to slam Islamic religion and culture the past few days. And to some extent that needs to be done. You need to be honest about what you are dealing with and there are plenty of quite negative aspects to Islam as a religion and political system. But unless you are ready to kill or convert all the Muslims, or Make Europe into (more of) a police state/fortress, it’s really not too helpful to harp on that point quite so much. The whole situation is terrible and I don’t have any good answers. But I am sure that “telling it like it is” about Islam is not the answer. Somehow integrating the Muslim population into Europe in a better way seems like the only alternative to massive violence from both sides. But I don’t know how that happens either at this point.

it will only move forward if the other ME nations act. We can’t bomb it to conclusion or diplomacy it to conclusion. But keeping people who are hostile to your culture out does not seem a bridge too far. Why are these refugees unable to resettle in other Muslim nations where at least they have the faith in common?

Europe tried integrating the Muslims and it has not worked. It’s not just France; look at crime in Sweden, look at England. These ways of life are incompatible. Somehow or other, the ME nations have to assume responsibility.

If they would drop the multiculturalism stuff and limit benefits to refugees and immigrants it would be a good start. People who have to work for a living are much more likely to have to integrate with the broader society. It is also terrible and ridiculous that the wealthy Muslim nations in the area aren’t taking more responsibility for the refugees.

The thing I think people are forgetting is that sure, these are all Muslims – but they’re different nationalities, ethnicities, and *sects* of Muslims. And they all hate each other. Remember the saying – the more petty the difference, the more viciously people will fight over it.

Indeed, they haven’t at all. Europe needed workers to support its welfare state – it never had any interest in immigrants for any other purpose. They would never be French, or German, or English, or Italian – just an other there for a purpose. So even if they wanted to assimilate they wouldn’t be allowed to.

Conversion sounds a lot more realistic than the other options. The continent of Africa went from having less than 10% of its population as Christian in the 1900s to roughly half; China and Korea seem to have had incredible amounts of their population convert in a short amount of time, as well. In all of these cases the countries in question seem to have moved closer to western models on human rights and governance. Seeing as how we in the West have virtually no way of influencing an inter-religious debate (which frankly, Islamists of various stripes seem to be winning among their co-religionists at this point), I don’t see conversion — particularly of the voluntary kind — as an unreasonable response at all; be it to Christianity or atheism (the latter seems less likely, but still more likely, appealing and within our power to enact than the idea that Islam will spontaneously erupt into a fount of the types of values the west prefers).

At the very least, strong evangelism attempts in the Middle East and among Muslim immigrants would concentrate the violence inwards and put the Muslim world on the ideological defensive. It’s interesting that this solution is so often rejected out of hand when it is the most likely to actually work.

This article, and maybe the studies themselves, are full of shoddy analysis.

Maybe the propensity to commit religiously inspired violence seen in the religiously repressive societies was the initial cause of the repression. Maybe the causation does go the other way but we simply cannot tell.

If there was a good longitudinal study with repression as the treatment, rather than what appears to be a classic case of correlation not equaling causation, I’d be more open to accepting tje findings at face value.

The thing that almost everyone values more than anything else is comfort and security for their families. It isn’t the values of capitalism and freedom that will make people more peaceful and value freedom more. It is the results. People with something to lose are far less likely to throw it all away for some grand cause.

that’s why I am suggesting that we stop any more immigrants or refugees from these countries. No new laws to erode liberty, no military adventure, no dead soldiers, not a shot fired.

Islam is not compatible with the West. Europe had loads of evidence prior to Paris. I don’t see what bringing in thousands of Syrians here will accomplish. What will they do, where will they live, who feeds them, what about a language barrier, etc?

This is why this version of Libertopia that people have with completely open-borders has never existed on Earth at any point in time. It’s completely unsustainable.

What do you do when you import a large population that believe in the complete opposite of your values? If you just ignore them then they’ll just vote away your liberties, if they’re violent, then eventually your population will vote away it’s own liberties to try to stop them. If violence continues you’re going to evolve into a police state in order to try to stop it, and if you don’t then your citizens will, and you’ll have a civil war on your hands.

Any belief or ideology that results in it’s own destruction seems to have a pretty big flaw in it.

And that. I’ve been wearing the “realist hat” a lot the past few days. But ultimately my beliefs about politics and government come down to some very simple moral calculations. I’m not comfortable with trying to engineer society to promote one particular belief system.

How should liberal democracies respond to terrorist attacks like the horrific series of murders on Friday in Paris? By re-emphasizing their liberal values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion suggest a couple of recent studies.

As a good libertarian, I support the idea of people being allowed to have whatever values they want – and to treat them by their preferred values. People who don’t support free speech should have no problem with me punching them in the face and telling them to shut up, people who think it’s fine to wage war in the name of their god should have no problem with me waging war against them in the name of my god, people who go around raping and robbing and torturing and killing for whatever reason should have no problem being raped and robbed and tortured and killed.

The paper shows that in a world in which democratic governments respond to major terrorist attacks with restrictions on freedom of expression and other rights and liberties, such policies have a moral hazard effect, which can make a terrorist attack more likely.

The cuddling effect. We feel “safer” because Daddy Government is watching over us.

But this is nothing new. The same effect explains why parents leave their kids in day care centers that end up hurting them or even killing them without first vetting them out: because they think that the government’s licensing process exempt them from their responsibility as buyers.

The same way the licensing process is not really meant to keep bad vendors out of the market but as a way to keep competition out, these restrictions on freedom are NOT really mean to keep us “safe” but to make us less free and more dependent on government.

First, realize that these are not random acts of violence like the current administration wants us to believe. The notion that these are “random” attacks would justify, in a sense, the freedom-curtailing policies that the administration wants to impose on the people. The thing is that these attacks are not random at all but focused on specific targets that deliver the maximum effect at the minimum cost. These attackers are not crazy people running amok wielding machetes on a busy street. These are smart tacticians.

If one understands that these attacks are focused and have a political purpose, then the need for such policies is obviated precisely because they’re too broad. If the government is really serious about stopping terrorists, then they would profile the people who perpetrate these attacks, instead of wasting resources by casting wide nets that catch nothing.

For the first time in at least a decade, imports fell in both September and October at each of the three busiest U.S. seaports, according to data from trade researcher Zepol Corp. analyzed by The Wall Street Journal. Combined, imports at the container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Calif. and around New York harbor, which handle just over half of the goods entering the country by sea, fell by just over 10% between August and October.

Time to raise interest rates, Janet. Gotta slow down this overheated economy.

Gundlach said about a rate hike next month that many economists believe will occur: “Certainly No-Go more likely than most people think. These markets are falling apart.” Los Angeles-based DoubleLine oversees $80 billion in assets under management.

Gundlach cited a number of asset classes that are signaling deteriorating conditions: The S&P Leveraged Loan Index, which is at a four-year low, the SPDR Barclays High Yield Bond Exchange-Traded Fund “very near a four-year low” and the CRB Commodity Index at a 13-year low. “You also have the Eurozone doubling down on stimulus. Fed raising rates? Really?”

I’ve seen video on CNN of ISIS fighters saying in French that one of the reasons they hate the French is because they passed laws banning the wearing of veils in public–not to mention banning headscarves in public schools.

In other words, Muslims do not enjoy our free exercise rights that the First Amendment to our Constitution is supposed to guarantee.

As an aside, anybody who thinks the government shouldn’t force fundamentalist Christians to bake cakes for gay weddings shouldn’t support the government prohibiting the wearing of veils in public either.

Unfortunately, if you go back and read Bin Laden’s original declaration of war against the US, it’s not just military occupation- it’s the expansion of Western Culture into the Holy Lands.

Basically, if we didn’t have a single troop in the M.E., Islamic Culture is still offended and triggered by the existence of Western, Liberal ideals, loose social mores, etc., via the influx of culture through radio, satellite dish, smuggled DVDs etc. The fact of the matter is, The Caliphate is gonna be pissed at you no matter what.

We weren’t trying to convince bin Laden. Osma bin Laden was a lost cause, and the only argument we should have directed at him was a bullet to the head.

We were trying to reach potential recruits to Al Qaeda from all over the world. We lost them on all sorts of issues–especially using Saddam Hussein’s old facility for political prisoners to torture Muslims, Guantanamo, etc.

And just because fixing one thing isn’t enough to fix everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move in the right direction. Who thinks that because scoring a touchdown in the first quarter isn’t enough to win the game that we shouldn’t even bother to try and make a first down?

Progress is always a good idea, and getting out troops out of Saudi Arabia was progress. If the French government stopped openly violating the rights of Muslims, the animosity against France wouldn’t disappear, but it would be a step in the right direction.

If the French government stopped openly violating the rights of Muslims, the animosity against France wouldn’t disappear, but it would be a step in the right direction.

on what basis do you believe this is so? The Muslims with the greatest freedom to go about their business are the ones in Israel, yet Islam hates Israel. Denmark had a publication that ran a couple of cartoons, not a govt running roughshod over Muslims, and the calls were for death. This idea that you can make nice with radical Islam does not mesh with the evidence.

If the discrimination against Muslims is mostly their imagination, then getting rid of instances in which the discrimination is real seems like a good idea.

For instance, Muslim girls are not allowed to wear headscarves to French schools–because it’s a symbol of their religion. Christian girls, on the other hand, are allowed to wear crosses.

It’s harder to convince potential recruits that the government doesn’t really discriminate against Muslims–when the government actually discriminates against Muslims.

Think of it in American terms. Why would blacks think that whites aren’t discriminating against them–so long as there are laws being enforced that discriminate against them?

This is like accommodation laws here in the states. How many fundamentalist Christian bakers are there out there who will turn down business and cash because of their religious principles? Probably not very many–but the issue of government enforced religious rights violations matters a lot to a lot of Christians.

For instance, Muslim girls are not allowed to wear headscarves to French schools–because it’s a symbol of their religion. Christian girls, on the other hand, are allowed to wear crosses.

I linked you wiki page for the law that explicitly says, no, crosses not allowed. Shit, Ataturk banned headscarves in schools eighty years ago, and that didn’t breed a generation of terrorists. French idea of separation of church and state makes Dawkins look reasonable.

“I linked you wiki page for the law that explicitly says, no, crosses not allowed”

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here.

The link I posted was for the veil ban in public–not the ban of headscarves in public schools.

Here’s a link to the one on headscarves in public schools:

“In December 2003, President Jacques Chirac decided that a law should explicitly forbid any visible sign of religious affiliation in public schools, in the spirit of secularism. The law, sometimes referred to as “the veil law”, was voted in by the French parliament in March 2004. It forbids the wearing of any “ostentatious” religious articles, including the Islamic veil, the Jewish kippa, and large Christian crosses.[26] The law permits discreet signs of faith, such as small crosses, Stars of David, and hands of Fatima.”

No, but by analogy, head band and/or crescent pin are OK. Seriously, schools said, take off your headdress to show respect. And no, there’s no requirement for head covering in Islam – it’s a later invention (picked up from Eastern Romans, really).

Yes, they banned wearing full face masks in public. This applies to everyone, not just muslims. They didn’t ban headscarves, burkas or turbans in public.

Dalil Boubakeur, the grand mufti of the Paris Mosque, the largest and most influential in France, testified to parliament during the bill’s preparation. He commented that the niq?b was not prescribed in Islam, that in the French and contemporary context its spread was associated with radicalisation and criminal behavior, and that its wearing was inconsistent with France’s concept of the secular state; but that due to expected difficulties in applying a legal ban, he would prefer to see the issue handled “case by case”.

Also, this is not unique to Muslims. French have had ideology of Secularism going for over a hundred years, but it’s only the Muslims who blow shit up. Likewise, the Headscarf ban

The law does not mention any particular symbol, and thus bans all Christian (veil, signs), Muslim (veil, signs), Sikh (turban, signs) Jewish and other religions’ signs.[1]

Note that Islamists were also pissy and murderous when the French didn’t imprison entire staff of Charlie Hebdo, and they were pissy and murderous prior to 2011. So no, it’s not that they’ll stop murdering if they get First Amendment rights.

Muslims in France being oppressed? It’s odd then that they’re migrating there, literally in droves. What breeds terrorism is Islam. What makes it an insurmountable chronic problem is multicult egalitarianism.

Does that amount to oppression? I don’t suppose so–but it is government discrimination.

And we’re not just talking about people coming from other countries. France has some 5 million French Muslims in their country–many of whom were born in France. They’re the descendants of Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, who legally immigrated to France more than 50 years ago. Lots of French people immigrated to Algeria as far backs as the 1830s, when Algeria was under French administration, intermarried with and/or became Muslims, and then moved back to France later.

This is to say that the idea that Muslims in France shouldn’t complain about the government violating their religious rights because things would be even worse for them in some other country is absurd–when we’re talking about millions of French born Muslims whose grandparents and great grandparents were just as French as I am American.

This argument is a classical fallacy: Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc is the false argument/ fallacy in which the person making the argument connects two events which happen sequentially and assumes that one caused the other.

Terrorists within and without our country to not attack us as a response because we curtail their religion. They attack us because their religious beliefs command them to attack us, simply because we do not subscribe to their religion or bow down before it as slaves.

Where do they get the idea that today’s liberals, in the US, are promoting freedom of religion and free speech? They seem to doing just the opposite, if we pay attention to the news! Denying free speech on campuses is in the news, everywhere! Oppression of peoples religious practices, too, seems to be everywhere. The liberals are two faced, or as said by Indians in the old movies, “They speak with fork-ed tongues!”